


There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep

by Dandybear



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alt! Grace, Character Study, Five's Name, Gen, Post-Season 2, The kids need a nap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:27:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25885819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dandybear/pseuds/Dandybear
Summary: "I've been meaning to ask you," she says around a spoonful of ice cream, "Why do they call you Five? They say I named all of you. Why didn't you get a name?"Five bites into his cheek with a smile. Of course."You named me, I just, didn't agree with the name. It's funny what they say about names being destiny. Luther means 'the people's champion', Vanya is 'the grace of God'--Ben means 'son of sorrow'."Grace blinks at him with a long suffering patience, "I named a chimp, 'Pogo', Five. What does that say about me?"
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Allison & Ben & Diego & Klaus & Luther & Vanya, Number Five | The Boy & Diego Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Grace Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 20
Kudos: 322





	There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this is a companion piece to numbers and colours and I call it "the sleepy bitch series" because I guess I have a lot of bedsharing headcanons about these nerds. So, this is a potential outcome where they find the living AU Grace and move in with her because fuck Reginald, amirite?

It's not that he doesn't know how to be still. He could pen a book on stillness. The dead fucking silence of mass extinction. Extinction where the only other noise of a living thing is the scratching of a rat ten miles away. A scratching that he would follow because God, it was just so damn lonely. So lonely that being offered a clear Devil's Bargain by a woman in a hoop dress was preferable, because by the time The Handler got to him even the rats had run out. 

No, stillness and Five are old friends. 

It doesn't mean that it's one he wants to see all the time though. He's in this constant state of not enough and too much. Not enough time. Not enough action. Every second counted and wasted--often by his own selfish siblings. They're gluttonous with time. They'll fill precious seconds with their bickering. All he asks for is their cooperation. Minutes they need for plans and action are instead flushing down a cosmic toilet. 

The too much is the noise. The life. The earth, full of warm sun, clean air, and living beings. Not a sky blacked out by ash and streets lined with skeletons. 

He took a running jump into the future at age thirteen and he's never been able to come home. Even now, with two apocalypses averted and Diego's snores next to his ear, he still feels stretched. Stuck between this and that. Unable to come home. To relax. 

This is what he's spent most of his life fighting for. His family sharing one space, all safe and breathing. (Well, save Ben, whose status is more complicated.)

Then, why can't he relax? 

Vanya snuffles in her sleep and her foot connects with his calf under the covers. He rolls onto his other side, watching her brows knit with bad dreams. He smoothes them away with a thumb. It was clever of the others to put them in the same bed. A way of holding him hostage. (The sleeping dragon and his favourite sister are one in the same, and to disturb her would be a crime.)

Which isn't to say it's always been the case. It's been a week of this new reality. A week of actually sleeping in an actual bed, and the configuration of six bodies into four beds isn't always the same. Much to his chagrin, he awoke on Monday morning to find himself nestled against Luther's chest. Wednesday night he fell asleep watching some reality TV garbage with Allison and awoke with his head on her shoulder and a mouthful of hair. 

It's not something they got to do as kids. Sleepovers. Sharing beds, candy, and secrets like normal children. No, part of Dad's experiment was to put them at each other's throats. Five wonders, sometimes. If he hadn't jumped back, would he love them as much? Did forty-five years of absence make his heart grow fond? Would he be just as much as a selfish asshole as the rest of them if he was a thirty-something right now?

He flips onto his back, mind and heart racing, and teleports out of bed not to wake Vanya.

He follows the only light in the creaking main house upstairs. 

Doctor Addams is in her study. Posters of great apes--anatomical, evolutionary, and artistic, line the walls. Miniature space crafts dangle from the ceiling like bad Sci-Fi effects. Then there's Grace in the middle of it all, silver hair in a loose bun and thick glasses perched on her nose. He stands in the doorway, feeling shy as he admires her. This woman did not raise them, but she took them in just the same. Kinder, already, than their own father. 

Five touches the scratches Pogo left on his neck, feeling the lines still. 

"You can come in," Grace drawls. 

She's got a bucket of ice cream and some grainy footage of chimpanzees in front of her. 

"Would you like a spoon?" she offers. 

He shakes his head, but takes it anyway. 

"Whatcha watching?" he asks, taking a mouthful of caramel pecan. 

"The second stone age! We've witnessed the use of tools by great apes before, but never at this scale. Some of the chimps have actually started using boar as mounts, so we might get to witness domestication in real time," the excitement in her voice is contagious. It hurts. Growing up, Mom was kind. She was programmed to provide the comfort they needed that their father could not give. She was a robotic nanny, but still, sometimes he would come stumbling back from one of Dad's more grueling training exercises, and Mom would just know he wasn't okay. He spent nights crying into her lap because he'd ripped open his bones and connective tissue on the jumps between time and space. 

Mom was kind, but she was simple. Grace is a woman he barely knows, but the depth of her complexity in comparison to the doll their father made of her--well, it makes him nauseous. Grace is kind, and brilliant, and savvy. He can see the years of wisdom piled into tired eyes and a warm smile. 

Just like his siblings, Grace is a stranger he loves unconditionally. 

"I've been meaning to ask you," she says around a spoonful of ice cream, "Why do they call you Five? They say I named all of you. Why didn't you get a name?"

Five bites into his cheek with a smile. Of course. 

"You named me, I just, didn't agree with the name. It's funny what they say about names being destiny. Luther means 'the people's champion', Vanya is 'the grace of God'--Ben means 'son of sorrow'."

Grace blinks at him with a long suffering patience, "I named a chimp, 'Pogo', Five. What does that say about me?" 

"Our robot mother named me Odysseus," he finishes lamely. 

She picks out a chunk of pecan, meditating on his words, "That is a heavy name to bear. I suppose it has been quite the journey you've been on, trying to get home."

He nods hard, feeling his eyes turn wet and glassy. Saying it out loud seems to have dislodged something that was stuck inside his chest. And that chunk was a cornerstone of the walls he keeps around his soft insides. 

"Even faced a cyclops," he jokes, hand flexing around the spoon like it did around that eye for so many god damned years. 

"Is that why you quoted that book to your father?" she asks. 

"No. Maybe," not consciously. Is he really this much of an open book? Jesus, he's been spending too much time with Diego. 

The approaching footsteps have him looking up. It's Pogo, whose strong Texan accent is honestly more traumatic than Grace's. Well, that and the ten gallon hat he wears outside. Pogo nods to Five, eyes tracing the scratch scar with some apology. 

"Got room for one more?” he asks.

“You can take my spot,” Five says, “I’m gonna head to bed,” and he’s not sure if he means it, but he’s not ready for all of this yet.

“Goodnight,” he grabs his spoon for the wash.

“G’night Odysseus,” Grace says.

He feels that like an electrical current down his spine as he poofs into the kitchen. The lingering warmth follows him all the way back to bed, where he chuckles to find Allison has taken his place. She’s flopped over Vanya like a second blanket.

Between the other three, Five chooses Diego’s bed to crawl into. Luther takes up the whole mattress, and Klaus is a notorious sleep-talker, walker, and kicker. Diego snaps awake, pulling a knife out from under his pillow and almost lunging at Five. Five curls his lip and rolls his eyes before pushing Diego’s knife hand away and flipping back the covers.

“Kicked out?” Diego asks, flopping back against the pillows. 

All this rest and nutrition must be getting to Five because the most biting response he can think of is, “Shut up.”

Diego breathes noisily before rolling onto his side, back facing Five, and promptly returns to sleep.

Five’s on his way too, when Diego begins to snore, loud and guttural. Five winces at the ceiling. Of course.

But, Diego is alive. The world is alive. And Five is fed, bathed, and not alone.

So, he will learn to sleep through snoring. Because he’ll never take the noise for granted again.

“ _ A man who has been through bitter experiences and traveled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time _ ,” Odysseus Hargreeves whispers to the ceiling.

**Author's Note:**

> I just think Odysseus is a good name for Five, okay? 
> 
> Please leave a comment if you can, it keeps me writing. 
> 
> (Both the title and the ending quote are taken from a translation of 'The Odyssey')
> 
> ((You are now cursed with the thought of Cowboy Pogo.))


End file.
